How long before queen goes sterile?

[Gwenyn11]

Hi

According to the Haynes bee manual it states that a queen has 21 days to mate after emerging. Any longer and it will be impossible for her to mate.
But some people say they have up to 40+ days to get mated before going sterile.

Does anyone now 100% what the window of oppertunity is?

 

[VEG]

yep maybe 21+ days

 

[REDWOOD]

All the books say 21 day or she will become a drone layer

 

[VEG]

That is to get mated. The time for them to start to lay can be longer.

 

[tonybloke]

All the books say 21 day or she will become a drone layer

wish my bees could read!!

(one queen took 8 weeks from egg to start laying) she was superceded later in the year

 

[DanBee]

All the books say 21 day or she will become a drone layer

That is to get mated. The time for them to start to lay can be longer.

 

[tonybloke]

That is to get mated. The time for them to start to lay can be longer.

 

[susbees]

I've got one hive in "suspended animation": imperfect supersedure at first inspection, VQ seen old Q gone. Second was last Monday. Perfect glazed arcs of pollen with perfect patches of polished cells. Waiting....

 

[Travelator]

The "40+ days" is probably counting from when the egg was laid until when the new queen started laying (both of which are fairly easy to measure via normal inspections) - not from when the queen hatched until when she was mated (both of which are hard to measure).

 

[oliver90owner]

The "40+ days" is probably counting from when the egg was laid

C'mon. give someone a break. If you are claiming you can tell when the egg was laid it is not exactly rocket science to knock off 16 days (the time from egg to emergence of the queen). Remember, too, eggs may hatch but queens emerge from pupation.

What is 'normal' is not necessarily the absolute limit.

 

[Finman]

.
It is not exactly 21 days but for professional queen seller that date is important because after that the waiting is hazardous time loosing.

My experience is that even 4 weeks but not more. You see it when a queen lays.

Many queens disappear during mating flight. If you note that. In mating nucs losses may be 50% even if weathers are good.

This was my answer to the question: does my queen succes..


I just read that in bad weathers laying may begin later, but in 10C - 15C day temps there is no hope.

It must be 3 days sunny and temp 20C that you get mated queens.
.
.

 

[masterBK]

In 2010 I took 10 colonies to the heather. When I brought them back in september only one queen was laying and I couldn't find the others. I tried to get the queens back into lay beofre winter by feeding syrup but to no avail. The following april they were all laying fertilised eggs and apart from that one queen all the others were unmarked indicating that they must have superseded their mothers on the heather. The point I am making is that queens can mate but not begin lay for some time. Unless you you see her come back with the mating sign you can't really be certain when she actually mated.

 

[Polyanwood]

That gives us some hope MBK.

A number of us have already had to do artificial swarms and since there has been almost continuous rain. Even when it stops raining it is still cool > 14C. It will be interesting to see whether the queens mate. My guess is that even if they do, they will not be fully mated, and they won't have enough semen to last long.

 

[Skyhook]

.
Many queens disappear during mating flight. If you note that. In mating nucs losses may be 50% even if weathers are good.

.

I've read that losse can be higher from mini-nucs than from larger colonies. The theory (I believe) is that queens are accompanied by workers on the mating flight, and that larger colonies will put out larger numbers. Functions of these workers may include a) helping her to find her way back, and b) getting picked off in her stead by a passing swallow- providing safety in numbers.

 

[Finman]

.
I know quite much about queen losses

- violated queens somehow. Human handling.

- in mating nucs, which are devided in several room, queen piip and call others to fight.
So finally, you had 4 mating cells and you have only one queen. Bees move to the queen.

- queen makes its flights and vanishes. Some say that birds catch them.

- bad weathers.